Philadelphia To Unveil New Round Of COVID-19 Restrictions Monday As Cases Continue To Spike
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- We'll learn tomorrow how Philadelphia plans to battle surging cases of COVID-19. The city is planning a new round of restrictions after a record spike in new cases.
On Friday alone the city recorded 1,100 new cases, compare that to a day in early September when the city had 25 cases.
Leaders say they now have to do something and gym owners fear they could be on the chopping block.
Eyewitness News went to Revolution Fitness Factory in University City. The owner says they barely survived the shutdown in the spring and likely wouldn't make it out of another shutdown.
Cases among younger people are on the rise, but they're seeing milder symptoms. Hospitalizations are also on the rise but the city is seeing fewer deaths because of better treatments.
On Friday, the city's health commissioner wouldn't go into details about which businesses would be impacted. But he said they're seeing spread in households, in social gatherings, workplaces and restaurants. Business owners say any shutdown should follow the science.
"I'll be clear, COVID is a very real thing, but we also have to be educated about how we're dealing with it and the fact that the last four months have basically been an experiment, for us. We're a living experiment and people aren't getting sick in our gyms and not spreading COVID in our gyms, that should be the evidence," said Ari Duenas.
"If we thought we could minimize this without any disruption of business we would do it that way. But everybody wants to make sure that there is a hospital bed available for them if they need it. We need to take action now to make sure that's still the case," Dr. Thomas Farley said.
If there's any glimmer of hope, Dr. Farley said the city will not have a complete lockdown like back in March.
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